David Lister: Biting the hand that feeds you isn't clever – even if you are an award-winning poet

The Week in Arts

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And off they stomp. Hell clearly hath no fury like a poet in danger of being associated with a hedge fund. Now that the TS Eliot poetry prize has a new sponsor in the shape of hedge fund manager Aurum, two of the shortlisted poets, Alice Oswald and John Kinsella, have walked out in protest.

The poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy is also shortlisted for the
prize, and has so far not found that a problem.

But Ms Oswald says that poetry should be questioning
institutions like Aurum and not endorsing them, while Mr Kinsella
says that "hedge funds are at the very pointy end of capitalism". I
hope his verse has slightly more meaningful imagery. But he should
have plenty of time to work on it, as I can tell both him and Ms
Oswald that there are really very few places they can now go to
enjoy culture.

Not even their living rooms. They certainly won't want to watch
Sky Arts as that is a part of the Murdoch empire, and recent events
have shown Rupert to be rather at the pointy end himself. The
Donmar Warehouse in London may be the best small theatre in the
world, but its principal sponsor is Barclays Bank, which on
occasion has shown a tendency towards pointiness. As for looking at
the beautiful paintings at Tate Britain, forget it. There are
already 8,000 people petitioning against it being sponsored by BP
in response to its alleged sin of anti-environmentalism. But this
is small beer compared with the allegations of links to slavery
made in relation to several UK companies. Pointy or not, Aurum
certainly hasn't indulged in slavery.

What are Ms Oswald and Mr Kinsella to do? They can't watch the
arts on TV; they can't visit many of our greatest arts
institutions.

The arts are, and have to be, a mixed economy, more than ever in
the current economic climate. They rely on sponsorship and have
been encouraged to seek sponsorship for years. The excellent
organisation Arts & Business has guided various businesses
towards the arts, putting millions of pounds into culture. Provided
those businesses are doing nothing illegal, not indulging in racism
or child labour or exploitation, it seems churlish and
self-indulgent to denounce their help for the arts. At the very
least, the protesting poets should give a proper, reasoned
explanation, in prose, of what it is about a hedge fund that upsets
them.

What counts is that these capitalist organisations, however
pointy, are enabling the arts to thrive in Britain. Contemporary
poetry needs the sponsorship more than any other art form, as it
can often struggle for visibility. The TS Eliot prize helps by
getting contemporary poetry and contemporary poets talked about.
Oswald and Kinsella have just made that job more difficult. They
are at the pointy end of protest, and have done poetry a
disservice.

Have your passports at the ready

Last week, I wrote how I was changing my mind about free
admission to national museums and galleries. With figures showing
that a third of visitors are now from abroad, it seemed wrong that
so many tourists were benefiting from free admission and depriving
galleries of potential revenue. However, I didn't think it was
feasible to have free admission for Brits and charges for those
from abroad.

Readers who have emailed me over the week disagree. They don't
disagree with charging (I was surprised at the near uniform
reaction in favour of reintroducing charges); they disagree that it
can't be done. I thought it a little unBritish to ask people to
show their passports or some form of ID at museums, but readers
thought otherwise. And one very senior figure in the arts told me
that people should indeed be asked to show their passports and let
in free if they are from the UK, and charged if they are from
abroad. I'm still a bit doubtful about that method. Would there be
two queues, one for Brits and one for foreigners? But I am
convinced that the public mood about free admission is
changing.

A case of being cast against type

Neil LaBute's play Reasons To Be Pretty at the Almeida theatre
in London is a highly enjoyable examination of contemporary mores,
as all his plays are. This one shows the breakdown of a
relationship when a young American describes his girlfriend's face
as "regular" rather than beautiful. This upsets her greatly. It
would seem to be objectively true, though, as her boyfriend's best
friend also, privately, agrees, though more robustly.

The only trouble is that Sian Brooke, the actress who plays the
"regular" faced girl, is very attractive. This skews the play
rather. Of course, it could be that Neil LaBute intended her to be
an attractive woman to make the insult more outrageous and her
anger more paranoid. But this can't be as at least one other person
in the play refers disparagingly to her looks.

No, it seems that director Michael Attenborough and his casting
team couldn't find anyone plain enough to play the part and didn't
mind the audience being puzzled. Has London no plain actresses
left? There's a gap in the market here.

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